TL;DR March 2024
A compendium of the comings and goings in research, development, and news about our digital playgrounds from February 2024.
Here are some of the things you may have missed over March 2024.
Research & News
Live, from SXSW
This year, I was lucky enough to speak at SXSW. If you weren’t there, the talk was entitled “Stop Blaming Video Games for Society’s Problems” and yes, it was exactly as it sounds.
SXSW was a wild and somewhat over stimulating experience - between the talks, films, comedy, and music there was truly something for everyone. Only complaint is the Fallout exhibition was only up for two days and I didn’t get a chance to see it (but heard it was fantastic).
Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024
Right after SXSW, I found myself at GDC - the largest annual gathering of game developers for a week of expos, workshops, and talks. 30,000 members of the games industry descended upon San Francisco for this event and what an event it was. Here are a few of my highlights:
The Gaming Safety Coalition was launched at GDC this year! Keywords Studios, ActiveFence, Modulate, and Take This have come together to provide Trust & Safety best practices, tools, and research for game studios. You can learn more about this coalition here.
Carlos Figueiredo (Head of T&S at Mojang) gave a wonderful talk about all of the new things that are happening over at Minecraft EDU. While they weren’t mentioned in their talk, I want to also give a special shout out to GamerSafer who I was able to catch up with at GDC this year. Their collaboration with Minecraft has truly changed the way I play Minecraft in my home (and has done the same for many parents I know!)
I was lucky enough to give two talks this year. I had a solo, 30-minute slot talking about the ROI on T&S (that drew heavily from this new report from Take This + Nielsen) and was one of the panelists for the official games advocacy micro talks, Culture, Civics & Karma.
Silence from game studios worsen harassment campaigns
In not so great news, this month, I also became the center of an intense online harassment campaign (including being featured center stage in a paranoid vision board… you know, one of those boards on a wall made with index cards and string) on social media due to voicing solidarity with colleagues in the industry who were themselves experiencing… an intense online harassment campaign on social media. Game Developer published a piece that really gets at the heart of not only my experiences, but the experiences of many in games. It has become almost assumed that eventually, if you work in games, you will experience hate and harassment. And that will be experience will be isolating with little (to no) support from studios and platforms. Complacency is complicity and it is time the game industry took a loud, clear, and public stand about what is and what is not acceptable in our communities.
Special shout out to the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) who released a statement last week in solidarity and support of those experiencing harassment.
ICYMI: Psychgeist
This month we’ve seen the release of several new “bite sized” science shorts for you to get your daily fix of games + pop culture + science in 60 seconds or less!
In March, the second episode of the Most Recent Save Podcast was released! I sat down with Coty Craven and talk about how we went from stable hand (yes, really!) to games accessibility expert. You can listen to the podcast anywhere you like to listen to podcasts but here’s the Spotify link to make things easy.
There was also was one new full length video also premiered this month breaking down why toxicity in games actually matters (apart from the whole ‘killing the vibe’ thing). It is essentially the TL;DR of the GDC talk I just gave a few weeks ago.
What I’m watching: Succession. They are all so bad…but then why do I also like, really love them in a weird - do I actually really love them?! - kind of way? Maybe just Roman. Just started S4.
What I’m reading: I’m actually catching up on all the coverage from GDC. I missed the #1ReasonToBe panel due to a scheduling conflict, so I was happy to find GamesBeat covered it. This is truly one of the best panels every year at GDC and ICYMI too, here’s an overview.
What I’m playing: I have been inducted into Fortnite. God help us all.
Questions from the Community?
I keep musing on ways to add value to this newsletter and questions from the community was the first thought that came to mind. Not only does Victoria Tran feature one every month in her newsletter (and she is forever my muse) but, I used to host a column a million years ago called Dear Dr. Rachel where I would answer questions (primarily from parents) in and around game studies. Each month, I will be taking a question from the community through the substack associated with this newsletter. If you are a paid subscriber, you can access this feature! If you are not a paid subscriber… why not?
Q: What are some of your favorite games to play with your children?
My kiddos are all under the age of 10, so we are very heavily into Minecraft and Fortnite. My two oldest really enjoyed It Takes Two (one of the greatest games ever made IMHO) and my littlest LOVES Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
Other places you can find my musings…
Personal Website, for more about my research and upcoming events.
Psychgeist, my YouTube channel dedicated to the science of digital games. New videos are released sporadically on Wednesdays and if you aren’t a subscriber yet, please click that link and hit that big red button. Subscribing is FREE and is the easiest way to support my work by increasing engagement and making the algorithm happy.
Twitter, (it will always be Twitter to me!) my digital home away from home.
Most Recent Save Podcast, go ahead, give it a like. I promise you’ll love it.
Instagram, for artsy pictures of me drinking coffee.